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Pistol Training at Home

Range time is precious.

We discuss this in detail and ad nauseum with our course participants. But it takes thousands of repetitions of an action to make it a reflexive memory. Where do those reps come from? Certainly not your once per month range session.

You have to train at home.

Training at home allows you to take opportunities to train foundational movements and skills, so they are being developed instead of atrophying. Skill atrophy is no bueno.

Although there has been some debate about the effectiveness of dry-firing and other non-range training, we have seen how effective it can be if you treat it as training. Airsoft is a great training tool, as are laser-training rounds and simple dry-firing.

So, what should I do to train at home?

Well, safety first! Make sure you are set up for success without creating danger. This means practicing good gun-clearing techniques as a habit.

• Make sure the weapon is unloaded everytime you pick it up or transfer it between people
• ALWAYS point the weapon in a safe direction and make sure you have a solid safe direction when at home. It has to be able to stop a bullet.

There are several different ways you can approach this:

• Breaking your draw and presentation practice into several individual steps. Example:
  • 50 Reps of hand to pec index and good grip in the holster
  • 50 reps from already indexed and good grip to presentation
  • 100 reps of putting it all together ensuring you are bringing the gun up, pushing out and getting it to eye level without “bowling” or “fishing”.
  • 100 reps of draw, presentation and a good, smooth trigger squeeze
• Using a blowback airsoft pistol to work on your fundamentals in your backyard (eye pro!)
  • This is great to get the feel of everything coming together!
  • Do this in your garage or outside – be safe!
• Using a laser round or laser pistol and the iTarget app
  • This is actually one of my favorite ways to train! I can do this indoors and the laser round or gun takes the risk of a boom out of your training. The app gives me the feedback I need to make corrections!

Train Correctly!

You cannot benefit from training that is done sloppily or uses incorrect techniques or skill execution. Make sure you are performing the skills correctly. Build good reflexive actions through the repetitions you are performing. Get a training partner so you can critique each other and create accountability to the training process. Ask us questions!

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